


The Practical Application of the Lives of Saints

by Sassaphrass



Series: Brooklyn Boys with Blood Fists [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, How They Met, Kid Fic, Nuns, Outsider Perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 13:10:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1745843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sassaphrass/pseuds/Sassaphrass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Barnes and Steve Rogers have just started going to the local Catholic school. </p><p>One of the nuns watches in amusement as their friendship forms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Practical Application of the Lives of Saints

 

Bucky goes to school in pants that have been 2 inches too short for his legs these last couple a months. His face is dirty, his hair is uncombed and like a lot of the other kids he doesn't have a lunch.

 

Steve shows up in an outfit that has been carefully pressed and laundered, even if the shirt is so worn it's more his mother's careful mending than it is shirt and he has to keep his sweater on all the time to hide how the sleeves are too short. His mother has scrubbed his face and combed his hair before sending him off.

 

They're an unlikely pair. Steve is a delicate child with fine features and a timid demeanor that belies his stubborness. Bucky is a happy friendly kid following the older boys and the nuns around desperate to be noticed and practically impossible to shut up.

 

Some of the sisters at the school say that Bucky has a bit of the devil in him because he's loud and disruptive and has a habit of jumping on people's backs screaming like a red Indian, but Sister Catherine had taken a shine to him. He didn't have the good manners of little Steve who has been adopted as the darling of the entire order but she liked him better all the same.

 

Sister Catherine doesn't care for Steve. She finds him dull as cabbage soup. He's an adorable child like a little baby bird with too big blue eyes. He's the perfect little Catholic boy, all sincere devotion and mild sweetness.

 

Little James though, he smiles like the very devil and is always conspiring to get chalk dust on her black habit. It's a little game he plays only with her since Mother Superior gave him the switch for the white hand prints on her veil. James doesn't know the prayers or the symbols and he obviously only listens because it's an excuse to talk to her and even then he's squirming with boredom halfway through, but he always lets her finish.

 

He likes the book of Saints lives that she shows him, the one with the colour illustrations. He grins at her when she tells him about Saint Catherine who was broken on the wheel and looks down at the pictures in awe.

 

Sister Catherine doesn't ask why he comes early or stays late, not that he does it in such a clear cut way. She knows what it's like for the families in this part of Brooklyn.

 

She remembers the eldest Barnes boy, Andrew, who had been a mediocre student but a kind little fellow who'd once brought her a bird with a broken wing and demanded that she get God to make him well. He'd died last year of polio.

 

She worries about Bucky. It's something she discusses in confessional. Bucky is not in any more danger than and number of children in her care, certainly less than many of them, but she spends more time with him and prays for him more than the others. It isn't fair to the other students whose immortal souls she should be safeguarding.

 

But.

 

Bucky is such an impressionable little thing, and she sees the way the older boys have taken to treating him. They let him follow them around until they get tired of him and then they trip him up or tease him or push him around. Half the time he comes in from the afternoon break in tears, but after school there he is running after the older boys again.

 

She knows Bucky is luckier than say, Steve Rogers. Sister Mary Magdalene, who taught some of the older children, had even made a comment the other day: “What a shame I won't get to teach that young Stephen, he seems like such a good boy.”

 

Steve gets teased because he's little and weak and slow. For his asthma and his dogged adherence to the rules. Honestly, after the fourth time Steve tells off another student for giggling during morning prayers, Sister Catherine can't help but think that if his poor health doesn't kill him than one of the other boys will.

 

Sister Catherine is about to call the students in for the beginning of lessons when she sees one of the older boys Bucky's always following arround grab him by the arm, hard enough to hurt, with a sigh and a hung head she watches as Bucky hands over his lunch bin.

 

She's about to ring the bell and will have a word with Sister Mary Magdalene about that during break, when she sees little Steve Rogers, filled with righteous indignation, charge over to the older boy and start wagging his winger in his face.

 

The older boy tosses Bucky to the ground, and winds back to deliver a hard blow. She's halfway across the school yard ready to deliver some divine justice when Bucky, picks himself up and smacks the older boy in the back of the head. He goes down hard, howling and clutching his head.

 

When she gets there,  James grins up at her and opens his hand to reveal a slightly bloody rock.

 

“Just like Saint Stephen!” he yells with delight, obviously pleased beyond measure that his religious education has turned out to have such relevant real world application.

 

Sister Catherine snatches the rock from his hand and throws in to the far corner of the yard. “You're supposed to emulate the Saints! Not the Jews! Get inside, and take poor Stephen with you!”

 

Sister Catherine lifts the older boy, she still can't remember his name, and runs him over to the Sister Sofia, who runs their little nursing practice.

 

When she returns to class she calls James up to the front and carefully opens the drawer of her dress where she keep the ruler.

 

“Class, James here has broken school rules. He began a fight, unprovoked and hurt one of our older students. Now, the penalty for fighting in 2 strikes to each hand, but given the severity of the situation I have decided to-”

 

“Wait Sister Catherine!” A small voice yells. She looks up and sees little Steve standing in his seat. “I was the one who started the fight! James was just backing me up! I should get the strikes.”

 

Sister Catherine twisted her mouth. If Stephen was volounteering she should let him, but if the strikes brought on an asthma attack the other sisters would never ever forgive her for it. She looked down at Bucky and that made her choice for her. 

 

In her most iciest most severe voice she told Stephen: “If you want to also be punished for fighting in the yard then come up here and I will give you 2 strikes. Bucky, will still be receiving four for what he did. So, if you want to be hit, come up here, otherwise, sit down Stephen. You'll be writing lines after school for interupting me when I am speaking.”

 

Bucky glances up at Steve and then stares at the floor, both hands out. He, like Sister Catherine, expects Steve to shamefacedly sit back down.

 

Instead Steve's face gets mighty determined, he puffs up his tiny little chest and marches up to the front. He sticks his hands out and stares up with a face of iron determination.

 

Sister Catherine has to supress a smile when she looks and him, but brings the ruler down hard anyway.

 

From that day on Little Stephen Rogers and Bucky Barnes are never apart when they're at school. After a couple of weeks Stephen Rogers is not quite as perfectly pressed when he sits down at his desk in the morning.

After a couple of months someone starts mending Bucky's shirts and seeing to it that his face is washed before he arrives in the morning.

 

If he tries to stone any other schoolyard bullies, he's smart enough not to do it during school. But, Sister Catherine notices that every now and then one of the school bullies will shufle into school with a lump on his head. Almost like someone brained him with a rock.

 

She chooses not to share her suspicions with Mother Superior and not to discourage the growing friendship between Rogers and Barnes. A boy with fire like that in his eyes will need someone to fight his battles and patch his wounds.

 

A tiny Achilles and a diminuative Patrocles, she thinks with a smile and then frowns as she remembers their unhappy fates.

 

No, a teeny-little Alexander and his loyal Hephastion. Yes, that's a better analogy.

 

Sister Catherine goes to ring the bell to call the class in from recess. It's the last day before summer. Next year Bucky and Stephen will move to Sister Evangelina's class.

 

Bucky doesn't come and sit with her as often as he once did, and he no longer follows her around like a puppy once school has ended. But he still plays his game of getting chalk prints on her habit. So, if she slides the illustrated Lives of Saints into his satchel on her last day of teaching him, well, no one needs to know.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no clue where this came from and I blame it on my sister's obsession with nuns. Hopefully it's cute. I wanted to do a little twist on the "Bucky saved Steve from bullies and that's how they met" trope. 
> 
> Because Steve saved Bucky right back. 
> 
> St. Stephen was stoned to death, btw. 
> 
> Also, they may be a little ooc but people change a lot from when they're tiny to when they're adults in my experience.


End file.
